1,099 Quotes by Hermann Hesse

The words are not good for the secret meaning, everything always becomes a bit different, as soon as it is put into words, gets distorted a bit, a bit silly – yes, and this is also very good, and I like it a lot, I also very much agree with this, that this what is one man’s treasure and wisdom always sounds like foolishness to another person.

Beautiful was this world, looking at it thus, without searching, thus simply, thus childlike. Beautiful were the moon and the stars, beautiful was the stream and the banks, the forest and the rocks, the goat and the golden beetle, the flower and the butterfly. It was beautiful and lovely to walk through the world, childlike and awake, open to what is near without distrust.

He could have exchanged his name and address with any of his neighbours, and nothing would have been different.

Escribir es cosa buena, pero mejor es pensar. La prudencia es buena, pero la paciencia es mejor.

The world has become lovelier. I am alone, and I don’t suffer from my loneliness. I don’t want life to be anything other than what it is.

Everything was a lie, everything stank, everything stank of lies, everything feigned meaning and happiness and beauty, and yet everything was decaying while nobody acknowledged the fact. The world tested bitter; life was agony.

Once all of the Self was overcome and had died, once every desire and every urge was silent in the heart, then the ultimate part of me had to awake, the innermost of my being, which is no longer Self – the great secret.

It was wonderful to be living in a house in a reign of peace, order, tranquility, duty and good conscience, forgiveness and love – but it was no less wonderful to know there was the other, the loud and shrill, sullen and violent world from which you could dart back to your mother in one leap.

Ich sehe, du denkst mehr, als du einem sagen kannst. Wenn das nun so ist, dann weisst du aber auch, dass du nie ganz das gelebt hast, was du dachtest, und das ist nicht gut. Nur das Denken, das wir leben, hat einen Wert.